No late-night host rises to the event of a controversial Donald Trump sound chunk fairly like John Oliver, who on the newest episode of Final Week Tonight tore into two of the previous president’s most headline-making remarks.
He opened the episode by tearing into Trump’s “disastrous look” earlier than the Nationwide Affiliation of Black Journalists final week, through which the Republican presidential candidate known as into query Kamala Harris’s multiracial identification. Trump complained about Harris’s alleged deception relating to her racial identification, telling ABC Information senior congressional correspondent Rachel Scott, Fox Information anchor Harris Faulkner, and Semafor political reporter Kadia Goba: “She was all the time of Indian heritage, and he or she was solely selling Indian heritage. I didn’t know she was Black till numerous years in the past, when she occurred to show Black, and now she desires to be often called Black.”
Based on Oliver, this remark was on par with Trump’s normal rhetoric relating to race. “I imply this in essentially the most disparaging method doable: That went about in addition to may very well be anticipated,” mentioned the host. “Placing Trump in entrance of a Black viewers and asking him to talk on race was by no means gonna get extra elevated than, ‘The woman mentioned she was each Indian and Black—that’s dishonest!’”
Noting that Harris’s father is Black and her mom was Indian, Oliver mentioned of Trump’s working mate, “I can not think about what JD Vance, a person with three biracial youngsters, was considering whereas watching Trump there. Though, you understand what? He was most likely considering, Have a look at that luscious upholstery. Do you assume these cushions come all the best way off?” This was in reference to the false web rumor that Vance wrote in his memoir about having intercourse with a sofa, a blind merchandise that Oliver tried to fact-check with Vance’s marketing campaign for a current episode. “They—and that is true—hung up on us,” mentioned Oliver in that episode, stating that hanging up didn’t technically represent a denial.
Oliver then moved on to the 2024 Olympics opening ceremony, which earned backlash from some (including the Vatican) for evoking Leonardo da Vinci’s Final Supper with drag queens. After displaying footage of Trump calling the obvious recreation “a shame” throughout an interview with Fox Information’ Laura Ingraham, Oliver mentioned, “It’s all the time unusual to look at Trump act like he cares about faith—as a result of, to echo one thing I heard somebody say not too long ago, I didn’t know he was a Christian till numerous years in the past, when he occurred to show Christian. Unexpectedly, he made a flip and have become a Christian individual.”
The Olympics and Trump’s interview with the NABJ, throughout which he falsely asserted that “thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of individuals…occur to be taking Black jobs,” converged on Friday when Simone Biles shaded Trump after choosing up a history-making pair of latest gold medals on the Paris 2024 Summer time Olympics. “I like my black job,” she wrote on social media alongside a black coronary heart emoji and images of herself showcasing each a gold medal and a goat necklace signifying her place as the best gymnast of all time.
